I find it interesting that these companies will spend time tracking the rare minerals to avoid those from the Congo and yet do nothing about the labor abuses in China and refuse to give american workers a shot at making these products.

Thrakkorzog:I find it interesting that these companies will spend time tracking the rare minerals to avoid those from the Congo and yet do nothing about the labor abuses in China and refuse to give american workers a shot at making these products.

You do realize there's a difference between wage "slavery" and actual slavery, right?

Don't care. May sound harsh, but I'm an American citizen, I am held to U.S. law, and I follow most of those laws. I am not going to feel bad because I use products that were manufactured in a nation who's laws allow for sweatshops from materials mind in nations that allow for slavery. It's arrogant to look at these countries and tell them that our way of life is the only one that should be followed.

The GMF thinks that if these no nothing nitwits don't want to die they should get out of the area. If you decide to stay and work, you accept the risk. The GMF also knows that thousands of people, Americans and foreigners had to die to get to our level of technology today. The GMF has no problem sleeping at night because of this.

MrEricSir:Thrakkorzog: I find it interesting that these companies will spend time tracking the rare minerals to avoid those from the Congo and yet do nothing about the labor abuses in China and refuse to give american workers a shot at making these products.

You do realize there's a difference between wage "slavery" and actual slavery, right?

One acknowledges that they are slaves, the other is constantly told he is not a slave, but should not ask for better wages. Or work environment.

MrEricSir:Thrakkorzog: I find it interesting that these companies will spend time tracking the rare minerals to avoid those from the Congo and yet do nothing about the labor abuses in China and refuse to give american workers a shot at making these products.

You do realize there's a difference between wage "slavery" and actual slavery, right?

Yeah, actual slave owners have an incentive to keep their property in decent condition (don't want to hurt resale value.) When you have a virtually unlimited supply of serfs you can pretty much just use them up at will, like so many ball bearings. It's better for the bottom line.

It's funny how some people get so worked up and excited about being against blood diamonds and then don't give a shiat about conflict minerals in other products. It's really easy to say, "I am NEVER buying another diamond again because morals," because honestly, who buys diamonds that often? Apparently when you actually have to give something up for your principles, it becomes much harder to do.

Great Janitor:Don't care. May sound harsh, but I'm an American citizen, I am held to U.S. law, and I follow most of those laws. I am not going to feel bad because I use products that were manufactured in a nation who's laws allow for sweatshops from materials mind in nations that allow for slavery. It's arrogant to look at these countries and tell them that our way of life is the only one that should be followed.

No you're not. There are no countries. The borders are only in your mind if you really think about it. There's just one big planet Earth and you're on it with the guy going underground for your phone materials. You're not going feel bad about sweatshops or trolling simply because you choose not to.

If it's on this planet, and everyone wants one, or it, or what ever, and it's in limited supply, people won't care how they get it. It's life boat ethics. Water is coming. there will be a time when it is gold.Actually, it already is.But would you kill your neighbor for water?With your bare hands?You know you would.

Thrakkorzog:I find it interesting that these companies will spend time tracking the rare minerals to avoid those from the Congo and yet do nothing about the labor abuses in China and refuse to give american workers a shot at making these products.

Really trying to figure out why it is my problem where resources for products comes from. I just don't really care. Seriously, if the people there don't like how they're treated/paid/etc that is Their Issue to resolve not My Issue. I don't see a reason to get involved other than to say 'Oh they might want to fix that one day' where They is someone other than Me because I'm not world's policeman, caretaker, conscious or guardian angel. I have no problem looking over and saying 'No' to any requests that fall into those fields.

Decillion:Great Janitor: Don't care. May sound harsh, but I'm an American citizen, I am held to U.S. law, and I follow most of those laws. I am not going to feel bad because I use products that were manufactured in a nation who's laws allow for sweatshops from materials mind in nations that allow for slavery. It's arrogant to look at these countries and tell them that our way of life is the only one that should be followed.

No you're not. There are no countries. The borders are only in your mind if you really think about it. There's just one big planet Earth and you're on it with the guy going underground for your phone materials. You're not going feel bad about sweatshops or trolling simply because you choose not to.

Great Janitor:Don't care. May sound harsh, but I'm an American citizen, I am held to U.S. law, and I follow most of those laws. I am not going to feel bad because I use products that were manufactured in a nation who's laws allow for sweatshops from materials mind in nations that allow for slavery. It's arrogant to look at these countries and tell them that our way of life is the only one that should be followed.

No one cares. Not really anyway. Not enough to make any effort beyond decrying it on the internet or making some trivial donation to a charity. Why do you think we have fresh food delivered to our neighborhoods every single day? Why do we have fabulous consumer electronics that are affordable to the average joe? Why can we buy clothing for only a couple hour's wages? Why can we work 40 hours a week and have 2 weeks' vacation and 7 paid holidays and still have all the rest of it? Some people have to live in shiat and spend their entire lives slaving under harsh conditions so we can have our lifestyle.

MrEricSir:Thrakkorzog: I find it interesting that these companies will spend time tracking the rare minerals to avoid those from the Congo and yet do nothing about the labor abuses in China and refuse to give american workers a shot at making these products.

You do realize there's a difference between wage "slavery" and actual slavery, right?

YouPeopleAreCrazy:Thrakkorzog: I find it interesting that these companies will spend time tracking the rare minerals to avoid those from the Congo and yet do nothing about the labor abuses in China and refuse to give american workers a shot at making these products.

Because that's where iPads come from, and ZombieSteve.

I don't think I was clear in my Boobies. I am surprised that these companies actually cared enough to make the effort.

Great Janitor:Don't care. May sound harsh, but I'm an American citizen, I am held to U.S. law, and I follow most of those laws. I am not going to feel bad because I use products that were manufactured in a nation who's laws allow for sweatshops from materials mind in nations that allow for slavery. It's arrogant to look at these countries and tell them that our way of life is the only one that should be followed.

Well, American citizen, our government and our corporations helped to create those conflict situations and that slave industry -- we were especially complicit in helping Congo to be the mess it is today. Our prosperity has been built on the suffering of nations we can control, politically, militarily, and monetarily. I figure, if we get the benefits, we also get the responsibility.

NutWrench:Experts say these "conflict minerals" help fuel one of the world's deadliest conflicts.

And here I was thinking that the world's deadliest conflicts were fueled by rich, greedy assholes.

Well it takes teamwork.

There are a lot of poor greedy assholes, too.Once teh rich greedy assholes convince the poor greedy assholes that they need a diamond, or a pair of Nike shoes, or an I-Phone, then the cycle is complete, and now the rich greedy assholes OWN the poor greedy assholes, too.And, and this is the beauty of it, they get to blame the poor greedy assholes for the deaths of the poor just-want-tightpussy-looseshoes-and a warmplacetoshiat folks out there.

vudukungfu:If it's on this planet, and everyone wants one, or it, or what ever, and it's in limited supply, people won't care how they get it. It's life boat ethics. Water is coming. there will be a time when it is gold.Actually, it already is.But would you kill your neighbor for water?With your bare hands?You know you would.

You can live with out your stupid I-Phone, though, assholes.

notsureifserious.jpg

If serious, you do realize that whatever device you're using uses the same minerals, right?

/it was stupid of those trying to raise awareness of the issue to frame the entire thing around smart phones...

stonicus:Great Janitor: Don't care. May sound harsh, but I'm an American citizen, I am held to U.S. law, and I follow most of those laws. I am not going to feel bad because I use products that were manufactured in a nation who's laws allow for sweatshops from materials mind in nations that allow for slavery. It's arrogant to look at these countries and tell them that our way of life is the only one that should be followed.

Yeah, Abe Lincoln, that arrogant bastard...

I don't recall Lincoln telling the world to end slavery. He just ended it in the nation that he was president of.

WTF Indeed:All modern mobile electronics are "blood electronics". The rare earth minerals are either mined in Africa by warlords or China by slave labor.

Yeah, but I'd rather poor Chinese people mine for my metals than poor African people. At least the people controlling the Chinese poor aren't mind-blowingly retarded. Just hopelessly evil, but they know it.

African dictators make the current Teapublican party seem calm, relaxed, and not stupid beyond measure.

toraque:Strik3r: Is it really that much of a surprise to anyone that a global economy divided by National borders essentially allows the global corporation to act outside of the laws of every nation?

Wait, the third world warlords using slave labor to mine minerals to sell to us are a corporation? What board are they listed on, NASDAQ? Sounds like a NASDAQ thing.

Actually, I was kinda referring to the ipad being made via child labor in China.....

Also, there was a time when people would actually have the option to choose to buy products from companies that they WANT to support. Today, you might think you have an option, but most likely your "option" is buying from the same vendor you are hoping to keep your business away from..

Neighbor's kid was playing with his I-Phone and I told him that the kid that built it was probably younger than himHe went to look up where I-Phones come from on the internet and his parents told him he couldn't.How's that going to play out?

Tantalum is a commodity. if one buyer does not buy it, someone else will. In theory, if enough big manufacturers signed up to the "non-blood", it would reduce the price of Congo's product only slightly. The other users of tanalum will just pick up what signatory consumers turned down.

The whole picture of Congo blood-minerals is wildly distorted from objective fact. Well, first off, let me acknowledge that YES, millions of people have been killed in the Congo, people are enslaved in mining operations, and the mined coltan ore (tantalum-niobium ore) gets sold. It does not get "sold" in the Congo, they have no commodity market. It's carried over the border to a country which DOES have a commodity market and pays market value. These neighboring countries have overlapping geology and AFAIK Congolese coltan ore is not even distinguishable from "local" ore, and they of course have a market mining their own ores.

Second note is that tantalum is not "essential and indispensable" for cellphones, nor exclusive to cellphones.Tantalum in almost all electronics is the "tantalum capacitor". These produce higher capacitance densities than traditional bulky electrolytic caps. However, the trend for the past 5+ years has been towards MLCC ceramic caps which are more reliable and have better leakage, thermal, and ESR specs, and are freakin' tiny. MLCC isn't commonly manufactured in a high capacitance range, but modern electronics have shrunk and gone to higher frequencies and don't NEED the 100uF range you use tantalum for and the designs more often call for MLCC as an objective design decision.

The tantalum capacitor is by no means "obsolete", but it's not very widely used anymore. I Googled images of the iPhone boards. The iPhone 3 showed what looks like one- ONE- tantalum cap, which is going to be a few milligrams of tantalum. The iPhone 4 shows NONE that I can find. I think you'll find them more often in devices with looser design methods and less compact designs, like cheap LCD TVs. I've seen plenty but haven't tried to graph it versus the date it was designed on. But its relevance is generally decreasing in all electronics. I do electronics design. I have a few hundred tantalum caps around. They cost anywhere from $0.06 to maybe a dollar for an extremely large or high-spec type (which doesn't use more tantalum so much as more expensive mfg methods). They're nothing special. The basic value of tantalum in all the phones of everyone you know is probably under $1.

The world market does use a lot of tantalum, not all of it for capacitors, little-to-none goes into "smartphones", and the ore price is very "high" per kg. That price does fluctuate wildly. In general it doesn't make sense to gauge a commodity's value in value-density though, rather, you'd gauge it by total volume of $ in production/consumption. The $price per kg is relevant for smuggling as selling off a million $ in coltan vs a million $ in coal is more practical.

vudukungfu:If it's on this planet, and everyone wants one, or it, or what ever, and it's in limited supply, people won't care how they get it. It's life boat ethics. Water is coming. there will be a time when it is gold.Actually, it already is.But would you kill your neighbor for water?With your bare hands?You know you would.

You can live with out your stupid I-Phone, though, assholes.

Wouldn't it make more sense to band together with your neighbors and kill strangers for their water? After all, you have to sleep and it's nice to know that the guy next door isn't going to crack open your head and feast upon the goo inside.

This has nothing to do with iPhones specifically, or even phones at all.

Virtually all modern electronics (including whatever you're using to connect to the internet and announce your idiocy) use components that depend on these minerals.

No, they don't. This is the iPhone 4 motherboard. I can't see any tantalum caps here.

You probably won't find them on your PC's motherboard either. Tantalum caps often don't tolerate elevated temps or high currents, not with high reliability anyways, and they're relatively costly. On a motherboard, you will probably find ceramic and aluminum electrolytic caps but no tantalums.

There's a niche for them, but it's not very big, and seems to be dwindling.

The news likes to cast this as a mysterious substance we can't live without and can only get from a single place, which forces us to conspire with evil men. It's not critical, it's not single-source, and the relationship with the shiat going on in the Congo is highly indirect. Neither consumers nor mfgs have any real control over it since it passes through the commodity market. Nokia does not send agents to the Congo to procure minerals from warlords.

You can declare a bold initiative, claim success, and write your own narrative about what you did. It's unlikely that there's any material difference to the plight of those in the Congo. Three likely cases: one, iPhone 4's new design specs simply didn't call for any tantalum caps anyways, so they make a bold claim that they are blood-free. Two, you set up an agreement with the refiner to only use "blood-free ore", and they nod and don't give a fark since they can't even say for sure from what's brought in, and nothing will ever be verified, so it's just talk. Three, you succeed in preventing refiners from selling you tantalum from "blood ore", but the ore or its refined product simply gets sold elsewhere to non-signatory producers/mfgs. The same amount was dug and the same volume of capacitors produced, nothing material changes. It's possible that you might reduce the sale price of smuggled coltan ore, but I couldn't say if that's gonna stop any of the shiat going on in the Congo, nor if lowering the price is even going to happen.

Don't know that I care. I fail to see how any boycotting has made any difference in Africa at all.For the last 20 years I have seen the same "help the hungry", the same "war in Africa" and the same "don't buy X" ads on TV.Nothing has changed. We cant change it and honestly I don't know that its our place to change it.We are 16 trillion dollars in debt. Lets take care of our own at this point and stop throwing money at a lost cause.I will continue to enjoy my cheap electronics guilt free.